“I’m sure. I’m not sick or hurt.”
The worker hesitated, but nodded. “All right, then. I was told the sheriff wanted to speak to you after he speaks to the man over there. Then you’ll be free to leave with your family.”
That penetrated. “I’m sorry, I don’t have a way to get home.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” the lady said, a smile brightening her face. Pointing just beyond them, she said, “They’re over there. Along with about half of the population of Horse Cave.”
Alice craned her neck and was shocked to see that the field just beyond them was filled with cars and buggies, and groups of people standing around and watching everything with interest. She couldn’t exactly see her parents or her brothers, but she was sure they would be there. Knowing that, she relaxed. Her family would help her understand why everything happened and how to move forward.
Glancing at Irene, she wished her friend was feeling the same way. She’d had a bad home life and now lived in a small apartment by herself. Of course she would help Irene as much as she could, but would that be enough?
With effort, she forced herself to look at the second ambulance. Its lights weren’t flashing, and there were a number of people surrounding it. That was where John Yutzy’s body was.
She didn’t feel as if she knew all the details, of course. All she could remember was that West had shot John Yutzy before falling through the ice. When the sheriff first arrived, he’d grabbed Calvin roughly, even though he was soaking wet and near freezing. Alice and Irene both screamed to let Calvin go, frantically sharing bits and pieces of what had just happened.
When Sheriff Brewer and Deputy Beck finally noticed the rifle lying next to John Yutzy’s body, they’d sent Calvin with one of the EMTs to the ambulance.
At least for a while.
Dwelling on that, she glanced over toward Calvin. The workers had given him a pair of scrubs to change into and placed several warm blankets around him. He looked pale, but otherwise not too worse for wear after his plunge in the pond.
Sheriff Brewer was still talking to him and writing notes. But another man had joined them. This man wore a black slicker with the letters DEA imprinted on the back of it. When the man patted Calvin on the shoulder, then handed him a cell phone, Alice wondered what was going on.
Hopefully, he wasn’t in trouble for shooting his gun?
Surely, the sheriff discovered that Calvin had fired his gun in self-defense?
Still watching Calvin speak on the phone, Alice wished he could come over to her and tell her what was happening. Instead, she sipped her tea and continued to wait.
As if he sensed her staring at him, Calvin glanced over at her. Immediately, his expression softened. Right then and there, Alice saw pure honesty in his face. Calvin really cared about her. And he was worried about her, too.
She wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but she managed to smile at him, too.
Oh, but God was so good. Here, even in the worst of situations, He was giving her a glimmer of hope.
Just as she watched Calvin continue to talk to the man in the slicker, Sheriff Brewer approached her. He had on a black baseball cap and a fuzzy parka-type coat over his usual uniform. Thick rubber boots were on his feet.
He looked serious but calm.
Alice hoped that she would be able to talk to him about whatever he needed so she could get on her way.
“How are you doing, Miss Yoder?” he asked as he drew to a stop in front of her. “I know some people have been giving you hot drinks and blankets. Do you need anything else?”
“Nee. I’m doing all right.”
“Right. I’m sure you are more than ready to get out of this field, so I won’t keep you long.”
“I understand. You need to do your job.”
He pulled out the notepad and pen that she’d noticed he was holding when he was talking with Calvin. “Tell me how you got out here.”
“Irene came to my schoolhouse. After we talked for a while, we decided to go to some new café that just opened. We took a shortcut through the field and stopped at the pond because we used to skate there when we were little girls. Then John Yutzy showed up and made us go out onto the ice.”
“Any idea why he was so upset with you?”
She swallowed. “At first I thought he was mad at me because I was teaching his daughter, Mary Ruth. But while we were standing out on the ice, he told us what he was so mad about.”
“And that was?”
Hating that she was going to have to share so much about her past, she mentally closed her eyes and forced herself to continue. “When Irene and me were seventeen, we did some stupid things. We took risks. One night we ended up at a party where a lot of kids were drinking. Some were doing drugs.”
“Ah.”
Feeling even more embarrassed, Alice glanced at his expression. To her surprise, she didn’t see any recrimination there. Instead, his face looked tense, as if he was worried about other things than her history.
Which was how she should have been thinking.
Feeling a little ashamed, Alice realized that she should stop thinking only about herself. It didn’t really matter if the sheriff was shocked about her past, or how he would think about her in the future.
All that mattered was that two men were dead.
All of the truth needed to come out.
“I wasn’t doing drugs,” she said slowly. “Irene wasn’t, either. But we had been drinking. We weren’t really drunk, but we had too much. It was a really bad mistake.”
The sheriff wrote down some notes. “And then?”
“Well, we wanted to leave. We were scared. Then a man named Able took us home. Able grew up Amish and said that he knew that we were in over our heads.” She cleared her throat, sensing that the sheriff was getting impatient for her to get to the point.
“Well, um, when he was taking us home, it was real late. It was foggy out, it was real hard for any of us to see.” Through the lump in her throat, she forced herself to continue. “I guess you can guess what happened next. Able hit a man coming on his bicycle.”
“Did he die?” The sheriff’s voice was urgent, almost like he was dreading to hear the rest of the story.
“Nee,” she said carefully, not even caring that she was replying to him in Pennsylvania Dutch. “But he was hurt pretty badly.”
“What did you do?”
“Do? Well, Able got right out of the car, of course.” Thinking back to that evening, she amended her words, feeling like the sheriff needed to hear every detail. “Actually, we all did. Able offered to help the hurt man, even take him to the hospital. But instead of accepting that offer, the man just yelled at us. First he called us a bunch of bad names in Pennsylvania Dutch. But then Irene had had enough of him saying all that, so she talked back to him.”
“So he discovered you were Amish.”
“Jah. By that time, he had gotten to his feet. He was scraped up and bruised, but we could all see that he didn’t have any bones broken.”
“And then?”
“Then? Well, we knew who it was. It was John Yutzy.”
“Your friend.”
“Oh, we weren’t friends. Irene and I knew him, but we’d never been close. I . . . well, I just had never liked him.”
“Why? Did you have a reason?”
“Jah. He, well, he’d always looked down on Irene because she was poor. He would whisper nasty things to her, talk about her behind her back. I didn’t like that.”
“I bet.” Sheriff Brewer wrote down more notes. “And then?”
Returning back to that night, Alice said, “And then Able offered to drive him home. But John wouldn’t have any of that. He started saying mean things again. He said he knew who we were. He knew that we’d been drinking.” Not wanting to share out loud the cruel, disparaging things he’d said, Alice shivered. “He said a lot of awful things, Sheriff Brewer. He talked to us like we went out and drank too much all the time. Like
we fooled around with a lot of boys, too.”
“Did you take him home?”
“No. Actually, Able dropped us off on the street near my house. Irene and I ran into the field, changed back into Amish clothes in the barn, then we each went home. I went to my room and fell asleep. That was the end of it.”
“But not for John Yutzy?”
“No, I guess not. I avoided him as much as I could after that. At first, I thought he was going to show up at my house with his parents and tell on me, but he never did. I just assumed he didn’t want his parents to know he was out riding his bicycle in the middle of the night.”
“My deputy is speaking to Irene now. Do you think she’ll say anything different?”
“I can’t imagine that she would.” Thinking about Irene, she hesitated. “She might have more to say, though. She and I had different home situations—and like I said, he used to make fun of her a lot.”
She was suddenly exhausted. “Sheriff Brewer, Mr. Yutzy recently yelled at me at school. Just this afternoon, I discovered that he had been writing me notes, too, which his daughter had been hiding. I have some in my purse that I can give to you.”
“Thank you. I’ll take them before you leave.” Looking at his pad, he sighed. “Are you sure you can’t tell me anything else?”
Alice shook her head. “I think only God knows why he went after me and Irene. Or maybe you will discover more when you go to his house or something. All I know is that we were crossing this field, he started yelling, we ignored him, and then things escalated from there.”
Just when it looked as if he was going to ask her more questions, Calvin approached. “I’m thinking Alice can answer any more questions you have tomorrow, Sheriff. She’s exhausted.”
The sheriff’s whole demeanor changed. “Yeah, I’m guessing you’re right, Calvin. You need to get home and put on some warm clothes, too.”
Calvin shrugged, like he couldn’t care less about what clothes he had on.
Sheriff Brewer swallowed. “Y’all about done here? Do you need anything else from me?”
“You could ask, but I don’t think so.”
“All right, then.” Sheriff Brewer turned back to Alice. “I appreciate you speaking to me. I know it wasn’t easy. Would you like me to walk you to your family?”
“I’ll take her,” Calvin interjected smoothly.
“Good enough.” With a brief tip of his hat, the sheriff turned and walked over to the DEA agent.
“You ready?” Calvin asked as he reached for her arm.
“In a minute. Calvin, what did the sheriff mean when he asked you about that man?”
His expression turned guarded. “What do you mean?”
“Please don’t play games. You know what I’m talking about. He was acting as if you were part of the investigation.” When his body tensed, she began to get confused. “What’s going on?”
He rolled his shoulders and looked away. “Alice, maybe we could talk about this tomorrow.”
“Talk about what?”
“Talk about my connection with that officer over there.”
Maybe it was because so much had happened, or maybe it was because she’d just been reminded that nothing mattered more than the men’s deaths. “It’s okay if it’s upsetting, Calvin. We’re close enough now to always tell each other the truth, right?”
To her surprise, he looked even more uncomfortable. “All right, then. Alice, you need to know something about my relationship with West Powers.”
“What about it?”
“It was complicated. What I told you earlier was true. I really was in his gang. He was the president of the Kings, and on his orders I did a lot of things I wasn’t proud of. But there’s another side to it.”
“Which is?”
“A while back I became a confidential informant for the DEA. For the Drug Enforcement Administration.”
“You still sound like you are speaking in riddles. What does that mean?”
“It means that I only pretended to be a member of the Kings. What I really did was share secrets and details about the Kings’ operation to the DEA. I have been giving them information so they could eventually bring them down and arrest the men in charge.”
“Which was West, jah?”
“Yeah.”
“Calvin, you weren’t his friend at all.”
“Well, I was and I wasn’t. I liked West. I really did. But he was a criminal, and I had no choice in the matter.” He grimaced. “You see, before I got myself cleaned up, I made a lot of mistakes. I took drugs. I sold some, too. And I owed a ton of money. When I connected again with Mark last year, I started realizing that I wanted to be different, but it wasn’t that easy. I owed the Kings that money and if I didn’t pay it back, I knew they’d kill me . . . or go after Mark.”
She shuddered, thinking about his situation. “So you did what you had to do.”
“Yeah.” He sighed. “It was hard, but the DEA offered me a deal. They would pay my debts if I agreed to go undercover for at least a year. That deal was so good, so much better than I thought, I took it.”
“This whole time I thought you were involved in a dangerous gang.”
“I was. Make no mistake, Alice, I was involved. I had to do a lot of things that I’m not proud of. But I wasn’t all bad.”
“But you lied to me.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t lie. I just couldn’t tell you the truth.”
“But we became close,” she whispered, thinking of all the hours she’d spent trying to come to terms with the fact that she’d been falling in love with a criminal. Of all the hours she’d spent worrying about him.
“We have, and I’ve been so grateful for that. Our relationship has been really special to me. You are really special to me.”
His words were sweet. And she knew that she should be relieved that he wasn’t a gang member.
And she was.
But she also felt as if she’d been falling in love with just the shell of a man. He’d never allowed her to see his whole self. And, if this whole terrible situation with John Yutzy hadn’t happened, he would still be keeping his true identity a secret from her.
Maybe he would have kept it a secret for a lot longer. Maybe even years.
“I . . . I think I need to go on home now.”
“Of course you do. Let’s find your family, then.”
“There’s no need. I can go by myself.”
“Your dress is wet and you’ve just been through a terrible time. I’m going to help you.”
His voice was firm and unyielding. Still feeling in a daze, she let him take her hand and guide her to her parents.
After he brought her to their side, she thanked him and got in their buggy.
On the way home, she rested her head on her mother’s shoulder and pretended to sleep so she wouldn’t have to answer their many questions.
Or wonder why she suddenly felt like she’d lost so much more than West that day. She felt as if she’d lost part of herself, too.
Chapter 29
Friday, March 2
The phone’s ringtone rang loudly in his bedroom, jarring Calvin from a deep sleep. Feeling around on his bedside table, he looked to see who was calling.
When the number registered, he answered right away. “Hey, Andrew.”
“Calvin,” his voice boomed on the other end. “Good to hear your voice. How are you?”
Calvin’s whole being felt raw, but that wasn’t something he was eager to share. “A little groggy, I’m afraid. I was asleep. Sorry.”
“No problem.” For the first time ever, Calvin heard concern in his boss’s voice. “Want me to call you back?”
Calvin sat up and shook his head to clear it. “No, sir. I’m fine. I appreciate you calling me so quickly.”
“There’s nothing to thank me for, Cal. We’re all still talking about what a fine job you did yesterday. You took down the head of the Kings and saved two innocent women from some crazy Amish man. As far
as we are concerned, you have more than repaid your debt to us.”
Everything Andrew was saying should have made Calvin happy. He was free now. Free to live the life he wanted, free of pretending to be someone he wasn’t. Free to start pursuing his own dreams.
But all he felt was empty.
Maybe he shouldn’t have been all that surprised. For the last year, he’d had a new sense of purpose. He’d had goals. Yeah, it had definitely been hard, pretending to like things he didn’t, and pretending to be someone he wasn’t. But because his alias wasn’t all that far from the man he’d used to be, he’d been able to fit into that role without too much worry.
Of course, it wasn’t like he’d had much of a choice anyway. He’d owed a ton of money to the Kings and if he hadn’t done a good job for the DEA, he could have either died at their hands or eventually gone to prison for the crimes he’d committed for the Kings.
“That’s good to know,” he said at last.
After a lengthy pause, Andrew spoke again. “You don’t sound all that happy about it. Are you worried about the rest of the Kings coming after you?”
“I’d be a fool not to worry.”
“All they know is that West died. He was here by himself, too, so no one in the organization knows what happened to him exactly.”
Thinking about Mark and Waneta, he said, “I hope that’s enough.”
“We’re still monitoring the Kings, so if we hear something, I’ll let you know—or we’ll put a guard on your brother and his wife. But for now, I have to tell you that I’m not worried. Men in those gangs are used to death and used to changes. No doubt several of the members are probably more interested in taking West’s place than figuring out what happened to him.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Andrew paused. “Is something wrong that we don’t know about? Are you sick? Do you need to be in the hospital? Brewer told me you were in that frozen pond for several minutes.”
“No, it isn’t that.” What could he say? It wasn’t like he deserved any special words, thanks, or concessions. “I guess I’m just trying to get my head wrapped around everything.”
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